2nd Sunday of Lent 24 Feb 2013 Sermon

2nd Sunday of Lent 24.2.13 The Presence of God


The apostles had a brief glimpse of the true glory of Our Lord and it had a deep effect on them.

Peter was so affected that he proposed staying there indefinitely. I think any of us would have had the same wish. If we could experience heaven for a few moments we would certainly not want to come back to earth.

The experience of glory was brief and the apostles had to return to their normal schedule, and worse still, the opposite sight of Our Lord being tortured and crucified.

In our own spiritual lives we have probably all had certain ‘ecstatic’ moments when we have felt very strongly the presence of God, the assurance that all is well and will be well.

But these moments pass quickly and we are left for the rest of the time with either a bland experience of just feeling ‘normal’ or frequently of feeling worse than normal due to suffering of some kind.

We would like to feel good all the time but we can't have it, not yet anyway. In Heaven yes, but not here. Here we have to slog it out, grinding away each day, trying to make ends meet, emotionally, calling on our faith to sustain us through the hard times and the drab times.

We learn not to rely on our feelings, which are very difficult to steer where we want them, and instead build up our faith.

If our faith is strong enough we can cope with anything, rain or shine, and proceed with a kind of steady even pace through all situations.

This is the state God Himself wants us to reach, and it would explain why He does not give us more obvious signs of His presence.

After all He could give us a Transfiguration experience every day but He does not seem to want to do that.

He wants us to work our way towards Him through the darkness. We will appreciate Him more if we have to do a bit of work to find Him!

So it is that moments of ecstatic glory are very rare for us on this earthly pilgrimage, but we can compensate for this by growing in faith.

This will mean that we do not need to see the glory of God around us because we will see it with the eyes of faith. Or, to put it another way, we will simply know that He is there and that knowledge will be enough to sustain us.

He is always present; His love endures. He never leaves us however much we may think He has.

To think that He has left us is the constant temptation that we face. We tend to be discouraged so easily; we have to be tougher as disciples.

This is what Our Lord was doing for the original Twelve disciples and He is doing for us.

He is promising us that if we put our trust in Him, even without seeing – He will reward us with a gift of strong faith, so strong that we will be able to hold firm under any pressure.

We may have weak faith to start with but if we only approach He will build us up. So we could adore Him in the Blessed Sacrament, for example, and we might feel no great joy in doing that, but He will bless us all the same, and we will be stronger for the experience.

What we lack in feeling we make up for with knowing, and that knowledge will be so secure that we will feel, if not joyful, at least confident that things will turn out as they should.

Perhaps God will do more things to make Himself known in this very irreligious time. We would welcome any sign He gives, but we do not rely on the signs. We believe anyway and we act on that belief, growing stronger all the time.

Till we are strong enough to see Him in all the glory of Heaven.